Blogaround

1. Opinion: 6 Groups Fighting Human Trafficking Better Than Operation Underground Railroad (July 22) "And OUR’s highly publicized 'jump' raids may do little to help actual victims and may even harm them."

2. ‘White savior complex’: Malaysia’s LGBTQ community slams The 1975’s Matty Healy’s onstage kiss (July 25) "The 1975’s concert, which was the headline performance in Kuala Lumpur’s Good Vibes Festival, has sparked a wave of criticism and dismay from the community, who say Healy’s stunt may have done more harm than good to a vulnerable group already under threat in Malaysia’s repressive, conservative society."

3. A blog series from Laura Robinson about Operation Underground Railroad, the group behind the new movie "Sound of Freedom"- and the common misconceptions about what "human trafficking" is:

The Horrible True Story that Inspired Sound of Freedom Is Probably Our Fault, Part 1 (July 16)
The Horrible True Story that Inspired Sound of Freedom is Probably Our Fault, Part 2 (July 16)
Cabal Goggles: OUR and Sound of Freedom, Part 3 (July 19) 
Cabal Goggles Off: Sound of Freedom/OUR, Part 4 (July 23)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Trafficking: Sound of Freedom/OUR Part 5 (July 28)

4. How Hollywood Corrupts Trans Stories (July 15) 1-hour-23-minute video from Jessie Gender. This is about how the trans themes in movies like "Across the Spiderverse" and "Nimona" were very deep and complex and central to the entire plot of the movie, but most movie reviews talked about very shallow aspects, like "there's a trans flag!"

5. Main suspect in the 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders dies (July 11)

6. ‘The lowest I’ve ever been’: how playing Jar Jar Binks led to abuse, near death – and saving Baby Yoda (July 28, via) [content note: suicide attempt] "It tells the story of Ahmed Best, who played what was meant to be one of Star Wars’ most exciting new characters, only to end up being the first ever recipient of a torrent of online abuse that spilled over into worldwide press coverage."

Blogaround

Cute duck with tiny flowers on its head. Image source.

1. Bank of America freezing accounts of customers suspected of not being US citizens (posted August 30) "Saeed Moshfegh woke up earlier this month to discover the strangest thing: though he had plenty of money in his Bank of America account, he couldn’t access it. An Iranian getting his Ph.D in physics at the University of Miami, Moshfegh used the account for everyday transactions." Whoa whoa whoa not cool.

2. We still have time to repent for American racism (posted 2017) "Our country has never done tshuvah for its many racist wrongs — particularly those committed against black and indigenous people. There has been no real introspection by those who hold institutional power, no formal apologies made to those enslaved or their descendants. There has been, on an official level, no display of curiosity about whether restitution is needed and what that might possibly look like."

3. redemption for rapists: a how-to guide for predators, abusers, and churches (posted August 30) [content note: sexual assault] "A teenage girl trusted you because you were her spiritual guide, her youth pastor? You must never serve in that role, ever again."

4. U.S. is denying passports to Americans along the border, throwing their citizenship into question (posted August 29) "The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Hispanics along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown." WHOAAAAAAA not cool.

5. On Sensual Attraction: Yes, sometimes people do "just want to cuddle." (posted August 19) "We live in a society in which sex and ideas of what constitutes romantic gestures have been marked as the most meaningful or “deepest” manners to express attraction and be passionately intimate with one another. Other forms of expressing human attraction and intimacy beyond sex, such as sensuality, are frequently already socially marked as precursors to sex or otherwise dependent on an expected “deeper” presence of sexual attraction or desire to obtain sex."

And 2 articles about LGB rights in Asia. Good news and bad news...

1. India's top court decriminalizes gay sex in landmark ruling (posted September 6)

2. 'People are afraid': Gay caning stokes fear in Malaysia's LGBT community (posted September 3)

Where was God? 上帝在哪儿？

Image source.

God, you could have f***ing saved them. What the hell?

You should have.

I am soooo angry. So so so angry. Last night I heard the news about the Malaysian flight- how it crashed in the goddamn Indian Ocean with no survivors. All of China has worried about it for 2 straight weeks- worried so much that I got tired of worrying.

Why did this happen? The world is stupid.

God, why did this happen?

It hits me hard because those people were all just like me and my coworkers and my students. People who have the money to travel internationally. Maybe for a vacation or a business trip. People who shared photos on social media and posted about how excited they were for the trip. And worried about their luggage exceeding the weight limit. And got stopped at security because of a water bottle.

The majority of the passengers were Chinese. The ones who were my age were their parents' only child. And I don't even want to think about what happened on the plane, and the extra confusion thrown in by language barriers.

This is so stupid. The world's not safe, you guys. WHERE WERE YOU, GOD?

What can we do? Just keep praying, keep living our lives- value every day because life is so fragile. And look forward to the day when God will save us all, and there will be no more crying or pain.

But until then, God, WHAT THE HELL?

Yeah, this post was supposed to be about Psalm 94. It's not. But if there's one thing the psalms have taught me, it's that you can tell God exactly how you feel. He can take it.

And he feels all our pain.

But this is still not okay.

It matters so much to me because there's a freakin' planet and a 12-hour flight separating me from my family. I'm already afraid of flying.

Oh God...

God... why?

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This post is part of a link-up on the topic of Psalm 94. To read other people's posts, click here: What do we do with vengeance Psalms? Here are 4 ideas.